What pits rule your life? Part 1

Why is it that you could be living your dreams, but you feel lost in the muck and mire of life?

Why is it that sometimes you feel so stuck that it seems like you can’t find satisfaction in anything?

Let me propose to you one simple truth. It’s not something that we like to talk about often, but talking about it is most definitely necessary. Often times, we can find ourselves in what is called a “pit” or a “rut” in our life, and it almost seems impossible to get out of. Sometimes we find that we’ve been in there so long, and we are so weighed down by it, that we decide we will be in there forever. We mise well get comfortable right?

The dictionary defines a pit as, “A large hole in the ground.” But in spirituality, you need to take this a bit farther. A pit is a hole in the ground of your life that you have either fallen into, been pushed into, or walked into.

I have been thinking about this concept a lot lately because I feel so much like I am in a pit of my own in life.

“In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.” Psalm 18:6

I looked up and noticed a book sitting on my bookshelf that has been there for a couple of years now, but has never seemed that interesting of a read to me. This book is called Get Out of That Pit by Beth Moore. I think it’s funny because I didn’t really know what was wrong with me, I just knew I wasn’t close to God the way I wanted to be. Nothing seemed to be what I felt it should be, and I didn’t know how to be living vibrantly for God the way I once was. This book is really helping me to understand what is really going on behind the scenes in my life right now, and what I can do about it.

Beth outlines in her book three ways that you can know that you are in a pit of your own. Either you feel stuck, you just can’t seem to stand up, or you’ve lost vision. I never really realized before that the Bible actually talks a lot about pits. Isaiah 42:22 says, “But this is a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons.” It brings light on the fact that a pit is a place where you feel trapped, and often times you feel like you will never escape from it. In Jeremiah 38:6 it talks about his pit being a place where the floor was made of mud and he was sinking down continually.

I find that in life, when we feel trapped or stuck in a place, we can equally feel that we are sinking deeper and deeper into our mess or into that rut. When we see a pit as a place with high walls, and muck and mire as the floor base, we can easily understand that we really are sinking deeper and deeper in that pit if we choose to allow ourselves to.